


Bookends

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don't know what the hell this is, but it seemed to want to get written for whatever reason.</p></blockquote>





	Bookends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sir_Bedevere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/gifts).



He’s lost in that faded cloak now, as I am lost in my wraps. The clothes too large for our shrunken bodies, the world too large, his eyes too large in his sunken face. The cataracts float on his blue eyes like clouds. He blinks them away, he can see me again clearly before him until the next spell.

“This getting older,” he says, grumbling, grinding what’s left of his teeth. His chest rumbles from frustration or phlegm. “I don’t even know where we are half the time.”

The next minute he’s a boy again, or whatever he was as a boy. “Where are we?” he asks me, confused as a child, lost in the blur of the room and too many lifetimes. So far from his cold command, now he’s too hot, too close to the fire.

“Volantis,” I tell him for the fourth time that night. “We are in exile here in Volantis. But you’re safe.”

“You’re safe,” he echoes me. Does he mean himself or me? The word sits on his lips, and he says it again silently, _safe._

“Yes, we’re safe,” I say, just in case he means the two of us. “This is home now.”

I stand to prod the fire, the smoke of one log becomes too grey and I worry he’ll cough. But as I stand my joints protest; I lean forward and my back aches; I sit back down, my knees creak. We’re both old. To be old and emptied of our lives, in the Free Cities: it’s not what we expected. 

I wonder if he’ll talk about the battle again, or the others who went before. Or the journey that brought us here, where every day he was a little more ill until I despaired for his life. I stood on the deck and prayed to every god I had ever heard or known. _Don’t let him_ , wordless, unable to finish the prayer even in my head. _Don’t let. Don’t._

The God or the gods or the pounding sea or the weaving land answered. He did not die. He sits with me still. The fire is raging. Where are we?

 _Volantis_ , I remind myself. 

We are old, we have lived long. We have seen what we should not: bones charred in the flames, teeth ripped from human flesh, the smoke that smelled of bodies and screams. And the things beyond comprehension, the ice that moved like water, enveloping the living and waking the dead. We have seen that too. I move the fire again with the long metal poker and the flames dance for us. They show the past. They do not show the future: never again, the future. We are almost the past now, and the past can only see the past.

The flames dance, the child in the fire looks back at me, and the lost sons — I have given up trying to say their names back to them — stir in the ashes. She is eternally young, the daughter of stone. And the sons are eternally born and unborn, white and green and blackened. Will I ever look at the fire again and not see their dreaming faces, their mouths open, the water rushing in?

“You can see them again,” he says suddenly, and it’s been years since I heard his voice, years of their aging and ours. 

“Yes.”

“She calls to me. But I can’t see her.”

“No.”

“What does she look like?”

“The same. Your eyes, your hair.”

“The skin?”  
  
“The same.”

We fall silent.

“The boys,” he says, after a pause.

I close my eyes. “Yes.”

“They are there too.”

“Yes.”

Again he says nothing; I say nothing; there is nothing to say. I look again at the fire and it’s solid blue, three flames with orange on their tips, but no children, no wraiths, no ghosts or memories. We watch for a long time. The years flow past, the minutes, the hours.

“It grows late,” he says, suddenly noticing, suddenly sounding like his old self. 

“Yes.”

“Smother this fire. We must sleep.”

“Yes” — though there is nothing to awaken for in the morning. 

That’s not true. There is something to awaken for, and he’s standing now, shaky, with his hand on my shoulder to secure him against a fall. Spiny fingers dig into my thin cloak. He suffered far more than I ever did. 

Together we wind the narrow path to where we sleep. It’s all dusty brown, rough spun, hard-won warmth and a measure of safety. I help him lie down, smoothing the rough bed with my hand. In the dark I cannot see the lines on his forehead but I know they’re there, and I can’t help it, I reach for him and smooth them too. My hand cools his warm skin. He smiles in the dark, I can hear it in his voice.

“Sleep, Davos,” he says, and his words are thick with exhaustion already. I wonder if he knows I am here or if he only says my name out of long habit. He reaches out, takes my hand, wraps his own around the fingers he shortened. I feel the word before he says it. “Sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what the hell this is, but it seemed to want to get written for whatever reason.


End file.
